Miller talks football past and present

July 29, 2011|By Matt Wenzel, Staff Writer

HT - Matt Wenzel

GAYLORD — Back before the advent of AstroTurf and instant replay and Under Armour endorsements, before logos adorned the shiny helmets of free agents, even before professionals, in the infancy of football there were only a handful of colleges playing a game barely reminiscent of its current version.

John J. Miller, author of “The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football,” sat down this past Saturday before he signed his book at Saturn Booksellers to talk football past and present.

During the late 1800s, while Teddy Roosevelt was attending Harvard, football consisted of a mixture of rugby and soccer rules, when only kicks over roughly measured goal posts were scored.

When asked why there was a split in the evolution of football and rugby, Miller replied, “It was the introduction of the forward pass that changed the game and made it distinctly American because that aspect of the game does not exist in these other parallel sports.

“It was introduced as an attempt to address this question of brutality and it had a role in that, but I think it also just made the sport a lot better. I don’t think it would be as popular today without that innovation.”

The sport was a brutal one. A newspaper article cited in the book describes the carnage: “They lay there heaped, choking, kicking ... gouging and howling.” Fights, hospitalizations and even deaths were often part of the game.

Roosevelt saw an opportunity with football. He was one of its most ardent defenders and even in the interior of the country, as he was recruiting his famous “Rough Riders,” he kept the game on his mind.

According to Miller, “Over time, especially as he grew up and matured and learned some lessons out west he started to think that rough sports like football could be positive social goods and that they could train, especially boys to become men and prepare them for a new century.”

“People are always making connections between his ranching experience and how he recruited the Rough Riders. He went out west to San Antonio and he wanted to recruit these cowboys and all of that’s true. But when you read his memoirs, he is also looking for football players. I think he believed that they came with a certain kind of mettle that he wanted.”

After giving reservations about taking historical figures and placing them in the present, Miller gives a view about what Roosevelt might think of the present state of professional football.

“I think first and foremost Roosevelt would be a football fan,” he said. “He would enjoy the sport. He would like what it has become and he would enjoy going to games and he would enjoy watching it on TV. He would probably be turned off by all the money that’s involved. He would not be opposed to the fact that it has become a big business but he would be skeptical of a lot of the business aspects.”

“The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football” is available at Saturn Booksellers.